IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Ontario, Canada joins cap and trade system to fight global warming; Students push Harvard to divest billions from fossil fuels; New poll finds majority of Americans support a tax on carbon emissions; PLUS: Last male white rhino on Earth is now under 24-hour armed guard... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate change-denier Sen. Rand Paul is running for President (and Brad is delighted about it!); Climate denial a looming problem for the GOP; Thawing permafrost a looming problem for the planet; PLUS: Greening the City of Angels: Mayor Garcetti's ambitious sustainability plan for L.A.....All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Arctic has melted so much that now people want to race yachts through it; Tea Party hires actors to feign indignation over plan to save Everglades; Plummeting sardine numbers could prompt U.S. West coast fishing ban; New York just quietly raided its climate program for cash; Michael Bloomberg puts up $30m to kill coal; Utility sales may drop by half as homes make their own power... PLUS: VIDEO: Is "Game of Thrones" Cli-Fi... and much, MUCH more! ...

Romm, who served as Chief Science Adviser for last year's Emmy-award winning Years of Living Dangerously series on Showtime, also breaks a bit of news on The BradCast by confirming that there will be a season two for the groundbreaking environmental documentary series. He promises that "it will be on a cable network that has a far greater reach" than Showtime, though he can't let us know which one yet.

The formally sanctioned racing organization, FIA Formula E Championship, was formed for the express purpose of promoting sustainable automotive technology. In 2013, it commissioned a study that was designed to measure "the global value of Formula E to the EV [electric vehicle] market over the next 25 years (2015-2040) and its wider economic, environmental and social impact." The authors of the study concluded that an all electric vehicle racing circuit would "help sell an additional 77 million EVs worldwide, save 4 billion barrels of oil and help make savings of 2 billion euros [$2.179 billion] in healthcare."

Study in hand, in September 2014 the group kicked-off its inaugural Formula E race season in Beijing --- the first stop on an international 10-race calendar. Appearing at Long Beach State University in advance of the 6th race, the Long Beach ePrix over this past weekend, Formula E Series CEO Alejandro Agag told students that the goal was to "fundamentally change how the public sees electric vehicles" and that "Formula E is the future."

In its pre-event coverage of the April 4 race in Long Beach, California, the L.A.Times reported that fans would be spared the noise of ordinary racing and that, instead of refueling, pit stops would involve the changing out of batteries. Formula E Series cars have plenty of horsepower, however, accelerating from 0 to 62 mph in 3 seconds, with maximum speeds topping out near 150 mph.

However, as observed by the Colombia Water Center, a number of "scientists argue that when the life cycle of ethanol production is compared to that of conventional gasoline, there may be no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at all." Citing an Argonne National Laboratory study, they note that corn ethanol is water intensive, consuming between "20 to 324 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol."

Of course, if FIA Formula E really wishes to advance sustainable technology, it should rely upon photovoltaic solar to recharge the batteries used in its race cars. As noted by the Sierra Club, electric vehicles that rely upon coal power plants "may emit more CO2 and SO2 pollution than hybrid electric vehicles."

The violent, "shock and awe" process that so-called "conservatives" cheered when L.A. police officials suddenly cleared the eight-week old Occupy encampment off the grounds of City Hall in 2011, will now cost the city some $2.5 million in settlement payments to the disrupted demonstrators.

The L.A. City Council, which had passed a resolution in support of the protesters in October of 2011, agreed to settle the lawsuit filed by a number demonstrators who said they were mistreated by police officials after then Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) ordered LAPD Chief Charlie Beck to clear the tents and peaceful demonstrators from the City Hall grounds.

As we reported at the time, after the space was cleared in a late night law enforcement offensive, hundreds of demonstrators were detained in poor conditions for hours on end, many handcuffed in buses without access to food, water or medicine. The excessive force and deplorable conditions were often brutal and, yes, bordered on torture. Some were forced to urinate and defecate in their seats during the hours of detention and faced other brutal and humiliating treatment at the hands of both L.A. City and County police officials.

As Patrick Meighan, a writer for Fox' animated sitcom Family Guy and one of the non-violent protesters arrested on the night of the crackdown, detailed at the time: "They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing."

Finally, however, it appears there will at least be some accountability...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Historic, first-ever mandatory water restrictions for drought-stricken California...but no cuts for the state's agriculture industry; Another offshore oil drilling tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico; PLUS: 35 years ago this week, even Walter Cronkite warned us about global warming....All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: All-time record high temp in Antarctica; Record low snowpack spells trouble for California summer; Biblical rain and flooding in Chile; Gulf Stream slowdown could spell trouble for Europe; PLUS: US unveils targets for big, upcoming UN climate treaty in Paris....All that and more in today's Green News Report!

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): 72% of voters support US signing on to UN climate treaty; Ominous finding on ocean heat; College-educated Republicans less likely to accept science of climate change; "There are no jobs on a dead planet"; BP oil spill caused lasting damage; Shell to return to drilling in the Arctic... PLUS: Lobbyist fails his own pesticide challenge... and much, MUCH more! ...

Was Netanyahu/Likud's win last week in Israel the best possible outcome for Palestinians? While it seems counter-intuitive at first blush, some who follow Israeli/Palestinian politics very closely say it was.

My guest on this week's Pacifica RadioBradCast, Estee Chandler of JewishVoiceForPeace.org and the producer/co-host of KPFK's Middle East in Focus program believes that is the case and tells me why. She offers a different (and very welcome) perspective than the Right/Left (and now, sadly, Republican/Democratic) narrative we've heard so much of from most of the media since last week's election.

Plus, Ted Cruz' astoundingly ingenious if extraordinary cynical remark the day after he declared his intention to seek the 2016 GOP nomination for President; OH tries a new voter suppression tactic; another predictable Internet Voting failure in Australia; Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report and MUCH MORE!...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Get out your popcorn - Climate change-denying Sen. Ted Cruz is running for president...and Gov. Jerry Brown is unimpressed; Is mandatory water rationing in California's future?; PLUS: In Florida, don't say 'climate change' or you be sent to a mental hospital....All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Out here in California --- for those of us now living directly "on the front edge of a climate crisis", as MSNBC's Chris Hayes describes it in the interview below --- it's both extraordinarily unusual and incredibly welcome to hear a politician with ambitions for higher office speak as frankly as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) does here.

Newsom describes the state's voluntarily water conservation measures to date, in the face of our record-shattering drought, as "small ball".

"I think we're going to have to move to mandatory rationing," he notes bluntly. Hayes appears surprised in response, noting that calls for mandatory rationing are "essentially anathema in American political vocabulary."

"This is serious," Newsom responds in turn, detailing the crisis the state is now facing. "This is Code Red".

"We can call for voluntary rationing because that polls better, or we can lead. And I guess at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves 'Are we just stewards? Or are we gonna step up and step in and actually share our private thoughts --- trust me, private thoughts are ample around some requirements for mandatory reductions --- or we can continue to play the finger in the wind politics that, frankly, has put us in this crisis in the first place."

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another Category 5 storm wreaks devastation in the Pacific; Extreme weather is getting extremely expensive; Scientist warns California could soon run out of water; PLUS: Some good news: for the first time in history, the global economy grew, but carbon emissions did not....All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Last year, the California State Supreme Court improperly nixed a ballot initiative meant to encourage state Legislators to support an amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision, according to a court brief recently filed by several state advocacy groups.

In the summer of 2014, the California state Legislature enacted SB 1272, a ballot initiative (Prop 49), asking California voters to advise whether the state's elected representatives should pursue passage of an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would overturn Citizens United. The advisory measure, had it been allowed on the general election ballot last year, had sought to establish that corporations are not people and that the rights enshrined in our nation's founding documents apply only to living, breathing human beings.

The effort to permit voters to weigh-in on the subject was cut short when the CA Supreme Court promptly ordered then Secretary of State Debra Bowen to remove Prop 49 from the November ballot pending full briefing and argument with respect to a legal challenge filed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association ("HJTA") --- an anti-tax organization founded by Republican Howard Jarvis.

In Eu, the CA Supremes struck down a ballot initiative that sought "to compel California's elected representatives, on penalty of loss of salary, to apply to Congress to convene a constitutional convention for the…purpose of proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget." (Emphasis added).

But, according to the amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief, recently filed by Free Speech for People (FSP) and other advocacy groups, the Court's earlier decision in Eu does not support last year's decision to remove the Overturn Citizens United initiative from the 2014 ballot. The brief explains that the state Legislature does, indeed, have the constitutional authority to seek advisory instructions from the Golden State's electorate via the ballot.

FSP not only defends the legality of the Prop 49 initiative, as measured against both the U.S. and California Constitutions, but presents both historical and legal arguments that, if successful, could define the very essence of our (small "r") republican form of government (aka, representative democracy) --- a form of government that is guaranteed in every state by Article 4, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A snowball's chance in the US Senate; Warm winter records shattered in the US West; Two big oil companies call for a price on carbon emissions; PLUS: In 1983, scientists predicted global warming would trigger unrest in the Middle East. A new study proves it.... All that and more in today's Green News Report!